Currently, when licensees or subsuppliers need product labels made of fabric, they make a request to the supplier who produces the labels in large batches. These large batches must be scheduled for printing and then finally shipped to the licensee or subsupplier. Finally, the labels are then attached to the products. A nonlimiting example includes the manufacturing of finished mattress labels in large quantities, which are then, upon request, sent to the licensee. The licensee then sews the labels onto the mattresses. The production of large quantities of product labels is very time consuming, costly and provides very little flexibility. It is not cost-effective for the supplier to print the product labels in anything but large quantities since there are set-up costs involved for each printing production run. Therefore, most of the product labels may stay on a shelf for a long period of time. In some instances, the labels eventually become damaged or outdated and have to be thrown away. Moreover, the licensee or subsupplier must pay for storage of the product labels before they can be put into production. These labels must be protected from theft and damage with associated insurance expenses. Also, special order products and experimental products will create significant problems. They require coordination with the supplier's label production facility with time delays due to the scheduling conflicts with pre-existing orders for product labels. The supplier will require a minimum quantity so that if the marketing test for the experimental product is unsuccessful, a significant amount of product labels will have to be discarded. A small special order will intrinsically result in the destruction of numerous product labels.
Also, most product labels have general information that appears on a wide variety of products and specific product information that only specific customers, e.g., subsuppliers, franchisees, need to utilize since they are only selling those particular models under the general product line. For example, with mattress labels, there are label imprint backgrounds that typically includes manufacturer's trademarks and other general information that can be applied to a number of specific mattress models. In addition, there is specific information that can only be used on one particular model of mattress.
In the description of flowcharts, the functional explanation marked with numerals in angle brackets, <nnn>, will refer to the flowchart blocks bearing that number. Referring now to FIG. 3, the prior art method of obtaining product labels using fabric is generally indicated by numeral 2. The first step in the process is for the user, e.g., customer, to recognize a need for fabric product labels <10>. The second step is a query as to whether there is a need for a significant quantity of labels, e.g., one hundred (100) <12>. If the response to this query is negative, the process is over <14>. If the quantity is over the predetermined minimum, the next step is for the customer to place the order <16>. The labels are then printed on fabric stock <18>. The labels are then sent to the customer and sewn into the respective products <20>. This is the end of the process <22>. A major drawback to this process is that a predetermined quantity, e.g., one hundred (100) has to be printed to be cost-effective. These labels had to be stored at a significant cost and could become damaged or obsolete before ever being used. This printing is typically performed on large-scale printing presses, e.g., Heidelberg presses, with all of the associated set-up, operational and maintenance costs associated therewith. This conventional printing operation is generally indicated by numeral 500 in FIG. 19.
One prior attempt to overcome some of these problems was the use of an ink jet printer to print the specific information on the product label by the customers, e.g., subsuppliers, franchisees, after the general information has been printed elsewhere by the supplier. There are numerous deficiencies associated with the use of ink jet printers. The first is that the ink used with ink jet printing is water-soluble and will bleed upon contact with fabric from a label. Upon drying, the printed ink will easily smear upon physical interaction, e.g., rubbing. An example of this is shown by the mattress label provided in FIG. 1. Moreover, the resolution for ink jet printing is relatively poor. An example of this is shown by the mattress label provided in FIG. 2 with written material under the EASY CARE™ trademark, as indicated by numeral 3. Moreover, the ink utilized in ink jet printing can fade as well as run under bright lights.
Ink jet printing on fabric product labels is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 2003/0118795 that was published on Jul. 26, 2003. This published U.S. patent application recites: “Also, while ink jet printing is the preferred embodiment because the label stock adsorbs much of the ink, thereby providing greater crock resistance, laser printing of the label could be used for articles where very high crock resistance is not needed.” (Paragraph 0031, Lines 6-8). Therefore, this published patent application specifically teaches away from the use of laser jet printing for mattress labels since this published patent application was specifically directed to the printing of mattress labels and only claimed and described ink jet printing due to this crocking issue. Moreover, this published patent application only discloses the use of an ink jet receptive coating, which is markedly different than laser jet receptive coating or copier receptive coating, which is collectively known as “toner receptive coating.”
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.